Terror

At the heart of how history sees the French Revolution lies the enigma of the Terror. How did this archetypal revolution, founded on the principles of liberty and equality and the promotion of human rights, arrive at circumstances where it carried out the violent and terrible repression of its opponents? The guillotine, initially designed to be a ‘humane’ form of capital punishment, became a formidable instrument of political repression and left a deep imprint, not only on how we see the Revolution, but also on how France’s image has been depicted in the world.

This book reconstructs the Terror in all its complexity. It shows that the popular view of a so-called ‘system of terror’ was retrospectively invented by the group of revolutionaries who overthrew Robespierre, as a way of trying to exonerate themselves from culpability. What we think of as ‘the Terror’ is best understood as an improvised and sometimes chaotic response to events, based on the urgent needs of a revolutionary government confronted by a succession of political and military crises. It was a government of ‘exception’ – a crisis government.

Terror brings together a wealth of factual elements, along with recent thinking on the ideological, emotional and tactical dimensions of revolutionary politics, to throw new light on how the phenomenon of terror came to demonise the image and memory of the French Revolution. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of the French Revolution and for anyone concerned with the ways in which political conflict can descend into violence.

Note on the Text

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Timothy Tackett


Introduction: The Demons of Terror


Chapter 1: The Terror – a Concept Imposed by the Thermidoreans

1. How the ’system of terror’ and the black legend of Robespierre were retrospectively invented

2. Developing use of the word ‘terror’ between 1789 and 1794

3. ‘Terror as the order of the day’: an unsaid, unofficial yet widespread order from the Convention


Chapter 2: The Meaning of ‘Terror’ Before the Revolution

1. Terror and Enlightenment. A problematic connection

2. The concept of ‘terror’ in the Ancien Régime

3. The role of terror in political theory


Chapter 3: Terror in the Heart: The Weight of Fear and Emotions

1. The spectre of conspiracy and treason

2. The flow of emotions and fears

3. The impossible combination of virtue and terror


Chapter 4: The Revolution and its Opponents: Clashes and the Intensification of Repression

1. Legislation targeting refractory clergy and émigrés

2. ‘The suspects’: how the net of suspicion widened

3. Repression against ‘federalism’ and the emblematic case of the Lyon revolt


Chapter 5: Creating Revolutionary Law: A Time of Political Exception

1. From ordinary law to ‘revolutionary’ law

2. ‘Revolutionary institutions and their role in repression

3. The recourse to extraordinary justice


Chapter 6: Terror in the Convention: Political conflict as an engine of ‘terror’

1. The Convention and the clubs: from political strife to ‘purging’

2. From arrests to political trials

3. Death as a means to eliminate opponents in the Convention

4. The elimination of factions, the apogee of ‘terror’ or the will to end it?


Chapter 7: Paris and the Vendée at the heart of the ‘terror’

1. Paris, capital of the sans-culotte movement

2. Paris, epicentre of the ‘terror’

3. The ‘military Vendée’, a zone of civil war


Chapter 8: Who Lived and Who Died? The Difficult Balance Sheets of Terror

1. Working out the death toll

2. Fraternal France and fratricidal France


Conclusion: How the Convention Reconstructed Itself After Thermidor



Chronology for the Years of the Convention

Maps

Some Further Reading

Notes

Index “This brief and compelling book confronts all the major issues posed by ‘the Terror’ of the French Revolution and lays to rest the myths and distortions created at the time and propagated ever since. It will be a continuing point of reference for anyone interested in these epochal events and their continuing resonance.”
Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles

“This is historical scholarship at its finest. Two of our leading historians of the Revolution dissect its most contentious, confronting period with lucidity, conceptual skill and cutting-edge knowledge. The result is a wise and illuminating rethinking of ‘the Terror’.”
Peter McPhee, The University of Melbourne

“Some books crystallize an historiographical moment. Michel Biard and Marisa Linton’s condensed, indeed clarified, English translation of Terreur: La Révolution française face à ses demons does exactly that. They have synthesized recent research, both in French and English, and added their own very considerable expertise. This book is now the starting point in debates about the Terror/terror.”
French History

“The authors stress the overwhelming impact of emotions, some positive, some like fear, desperately negative. This account, impressively clear, concise and scholarly, provides a very convincing account which will serve the needs of university students and provoke the interest of general readers. It is the work of two leading experts in France and Britain, endorsed by an American expert of world renown.”
Modern & Contemporary France

"[A] worthy text that very helpfully condenses several major historiographical and ideological debates around the French revolutionary Terror into a readable discussion."
Journal of Modern History

Michel Biard is Professor of Modern History at the University of Rouen.
Marisa Linton is Professor Emerita in History, Kingston University.